"We’re all prone to believing that everything happened to be at its objective peak at precisely the point when we were young and enthusiastic. And we never stop to think just how unlikely a coincidence that would be."

I TURNED 37 this week and, as such, I’m fully aware that I’m well past the age at which it is my solemn duty to detest X Factor.

I’m supposed to bemoan its violent impact on the UK’s music scene, the way in which it fills the heads of our children with unattainable visions of stardom and the piles of cash it makes for Simon Cowell and other music industry megalomaniacs.

And I will get round to it, I promise. I know I’m leaving the rest of my fellow grumpy soon-to-be-old men with a lot of slack to pick up. It’s just that I don’t hate X Factor because nothing I said in the previous paragraph is remotely true, that’s all.

For example, the biggest selling single in the UK in 2003 – the year before X Factor “ruined the charts for ever” – was The Black Eyed Peas’ Where Is The Love. In the years before that, it was Will Young’s Evergreen, Shaggy’s It Wasn’t Me, Can We Fix It?, by Bob The Builder, Baby One More Time, by Britney Spears, and Believe, by Cher.

All, I hope you’ll agree, dreadful. None of them anything to do with X Factor.

The years prior to that run are seen as a golden age of vibrant, original British music – but the big sellers were Elton John, Robson & Jerome and Wet Wet Wet, not Oasis, Blur and Pulp.

Lesson: The charts have always been rubbish. Ignore the charts and listen to what you like.

Secondly, children have always wanted to be pop stars; hardly any of them make it. The process by which the few do and the many don’t has always been cynical and bloodthirsty – at least X Factor has made it a bit more transparent.

Its producers will insert a sympathetic sob story here, or leak negative copy to the press there, but the kids of today will be wiser than any previous generation to the old, old tricks of the trade.

Similarly, the music industry – like any other industry – has always made awful people awfully rich. That’s not X Factor’s fault.

What really bugs us thirtysomethings about X Factor isn’t any of the above – it’s that it’s a weekly reminder that pop culture and pop music aren’t aimed at us any more. We’re all prone to believing that everything – music, sport, TV, whatever – happened to be at its objective peak at precisely the point when we were young and enthusiastic. And we never stop to think just how unlikely a coincidence that would be.

So, I’m taking the kids to the ECHO arena on Sunday to see Honey G and Matt Terry and Saara Aalto and the rest. And they’ll love it. Maybe they’ll be bitter and cynical one day – before then, they deserve to have some fun.